Guest Post - Girl Problems in the Mortuary

    A female mortician and I were talking about mortuary work and the topic of fingernails came up. How she managed to wear glove and perform mortuary duties despite having relatively long and elaborate fingernails. So she has decided to write a post about being a woman in the mortuary. Here it is:

Don't get me wrong it's not all bad, but being a female certainly does have its disadvantages. Allow me to elaborate.

Female mortician Cons:

You can't have your nails too long. The reason being that you constantly need to hold on to things tightly and long nails often get in the way of this, making it difficult to do things like roll a deceased person and dress them by yourself. I recently had fabulous nails put on for a week, however I must admit that some of my usual tasks within the mortuary suddenly became a 2 man (or in my case 2 women) job.

I'm no body builder. Or at least not in the 'I go to the gym' sense of the phrase. I am without a doubt a weakling compared to my male counterparts. This once again can make it difficult to roll and a dress a deceased person of a larger frame. In this case refer back to point one.

My personal protective face mask wipes makeup off my face in patches. Fortunately the recently departed don't mind so much, but I sure look silly when I go out on lunch.

When I get to a certain point in mortuary preparation I will sometimes take off my face mask. In accordance to Murphy's law, when I have contaminated gloves on, my face will get itchy so I use my shoulder and forearm to try and get the itch. Apart from looking like a fool while I do it, I once again wipe off patches of my makeup, only this time I also get patches of foundation on the shoulders and sleeves of my mortuary scrubs... which are black.

Speaking of personal protective equipment when I'm working in the mortuary I am wrapped in disposable plastic gowns, sleeves and gloves. Not to mention my gumboots and face mask. It is with this in mind that you can see how having a smaller bladder would also prove to be a disadvantage.  I'm forever gowning up and ungowning to go to the bathroom!

Personal grooming. As a feminine mortician does, I have long hair. So long in fact that simply having it in a pony tail means I still am gambling with the chance that it will be dipped into the face of a deceased person. As a result I have to put it up in a bun to avoid unsightly new hair pieces. 

Female mortician Pros:

I wear makeup almost everyday, and over the years have become very good at applying it, and during my earlier years covering blemishes as well.  This has made me very good at applying makeup to the lady's that find themselves on my table

And finally, I get to enjoy the little things like... bejewelling my safety glasses

Anyway as you can see most of the problems are medial little things, but thats life. Full of first world problems. And apparently so is death.

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